Can you run three monitors using a dual-head AGP card & a PCI card

[Grog]

Can you run three monitors using a dual-head AGP card & a PCI card? They would all be ATI built cards running CRTs

Thanks

[Peter M]

In general, as long as all the VGA units involved are multi-VGA capable, yes you can. Above that, you need all involved drivers to play nice with each others.

If it's all Radeons, then I'd say you should be fine.

[DallasDon]

Yes, you can. Simply install the card and drivers, and reboot.

Right click the wallpaper, go to properties, click settings.

Should have three monitors in the window.

Select each one in the pop up tab, and check Extend my desktop unto this monitor.

This setting should be 'independent" mode. There is also Spanning, across all three monitors, and Cloning, all monitors display the same thing.

The only combo of multi monitors that will not work is onboard and AGP card. The onboard uses the AGP bus, and disables the onboard vid as soon as an AGP card is installed.

[Grog]

Wow !!! Thanks for the fast replys. I'm looking at replacing the 16mb agp in my Dell 4400. I picked up an ati 64mb pci card for $20 at a walmart that was trying to get rid of it. The thought was to get a 128 agp card for my main monitor and run the pci to a 2nd monitor. The thought of three sounded too good to be true (on a budget) but that is a possibilty now...

Thanks again

[Peter M]

If you're going to stick with two then you're definitely best off running them both off the AGP card. PCI VGA is a huge system bandwidth hog.

Radeon 9200SE w/ dual head capability is less than $50!

[Grog]

I will use a dual head card if I stick with two monitors. Thanks for the facts behind the reasoning tho

[skouser]

I've been reading the posts re: multi monitors. A while back I removed my 17" CRT to check a mate's computer after a repair, but when I plugged it back in mine, it was dead. I played about with it, but nothing! I was in a hurry to do some important work so I bought another monitor - a 15" Flat Screen. Later, when I had the time, and really pissed that the thing had died on me, I had a good look at it. The monitor was okay, I had bent one of the pins. I straightened the pin and it worked. So now I had two monitors.

I connected the two up to my Geforce fx5200 card (one AGP, and with an adapter one DVI) and I had two moitors, brilliant. But it looked a bit strange. Then I bought a friend's, identical to mine Flat Screen (when he upgraded to a 19"), and thought I'd run three monitors and the whole thing would look balanced. But when I try to buy a PCI card, I'm told you can't get them anymore. I took a Prolink card I had in an old PC, but it's too long to fit the case. Anybody got any ideas how to do it? My system is:

Processor INTEL PENTIUM 4 Prescott @ 3.4GHZ 800mhz FSB/HTT/1MB
Memory 1024 MB DDR400 PC3200
Motherboard HIGH END ASUS: DUAL DDR, S-ATA, 8X AGP, 5 PCI, 800MHZ FSB
Graphics 128MB GEFORCE FX5200 8X AGP + DVI + TV-OUT
Sound SoundBlaster Live 7.1 24-bit (Digital & Analogue):
Power Supply & Cooling Silent 550W PSU + 120mm Fan + 19.2 dBA CPU Cooler

[CXT]

@ skouser

Go to dabs.com or Insight.com/uk and pick up a PCI gfx card no problem.
Mind you get PCI, not the newer PCI Express, which has a different interface.

[Imperion1]

His question was probably already answered 2.5 years ago.

[glendalf81]

Yeah, as long as you are using ATI card, you will be fine. Just don't mix match NVidia Cards.
They are buggy if you don't use the same exact cards.


Here is a great article section I found at spam link removed (A beginners introduction to Multiple Monitors)


The Three main ways to Setup Multiple Monitors


1) You can buy a ...blah blah blah

how long have you worked for spam link removed mate

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

how long have you worked for multi-screens.com mate

I was wondering the same thing.....

Although, TBH, most of the links go to multi-monitor.com....

[glendalf81]

could just be covering his tracks, lol